What to do with all the shape tools in Affinity?

[Caroline Trippe]

I've been looking through all the tutorials, and the posts on the forum, so apologies if I have missed something---I'm very new to Affinity.  Is there a tutorial that demonstrates what can be done with the various shapes included under the rectangle tool?  In my old Photoshop Elements 8 there were shape tools that could be used as crop shapes, etc., say, if I wanted to crop something to an oval shape,  but apparently these shapes don't work the same way in Affinity.  It looks as though there are some interesting possibilities there with all those shapes, but at this point I don't quite know how to use them---except for the rectangle shape, to create a border. Anyone?  

[Alfred]

In my old Photoshop Elements 8 there were shape tools that could be used as crop shapes, etc., say, if I wanted to crop something to an oval shape,  but apparently these shapes don't work the same way in Affinity.

 

You can use any shape as a crop shape. Draw the shape (e.g. an ellipse) on top of the object that you want to crop, and then go to the Layers panel, click and drag on the crop shape's thumbnail and drop it on top of the other object's thumbnail.

[Caroline Trippe]

 That sounds simple enough!  Thank you, Alfred.

[Alfred]

You're very welcome, Caroline. Thanks for the feedback! :)

[gdenby]

Hi, Caroline,

 

You didn't say if you were using Affinity Designer or Photo.

 

I just have AD, but I think both have the same set of shape tools. I spent my 1st week w. AD just exploring the shape tools, and their variations. My recollection is that there are in excess of 400 shape variants. I'm uncertain if Photo has the corner tool, which can modify shapes even farther.

 

Here is a quick example. Dragged a seabed image onto an AD document. Cropped it w a diamond shape. Duplicated, and formed a set of tiles. Dropped those into a cog shape w. no fill.

 

 

Same can be done w. shapes created by the pen and pencil tools.

[R C-R]

It is as simple as Alfred explained; however, quite a few users overlook that you need to drop the crop shape on the thumbnail (the little icon on the left) of the other layer to do this. If you drop it on the text part of the other layer, it instead becomes a child of that layer.

 

Child layers do not crop their parent layer; instead they only appear where they overlap with the parent layer, more or less the opposite of what you want cropping to do.

 

Both are useful features but knowing the difference between how each is created can cut down on those 'wtf just happened?' moments when learning how to use the app.  :)

[Caroline Trippe]

Thanks to all  for your  very helpful replies!  At this point I am using only Affinity Photo.   Figuring it out a little at a time. I'm not completely unfamiliar with image editing---used PSE 8 in a fairly basic way for years, mostly for  simple cropping and color & light adjustments.  I never used layers much, and didn't really understand them until  I started with Affinity, but am beginning to "get it. " Alfred's suggestion worked---after a couple tries, I got the part about dragging the crop shape to the right place. Eventually I'll remember what I did right so I can do it again! It just takes patience and the willingness to be persistent.  :)

[Alfred]

Alfred's suggestion worked---after a couple tries, I got the part about dragging the crop shape to the right place. Eventually I'll remember what I did right so I can do it again! It just takes patience and the willingness to be persistent.  :)

 

When the crop shape thumbnail has been dragged to the right place, you'll see a short, fat, vertical blue line immediately to the right of the target thumbnail. When dragging an object to the text part of another object to make it become clipped by (i.e. a child of) the target object, you get a long, fat, horizontal blue line extending to the right of the target object's thumbnail.

[MEB]

Hi Caroline,

Take a look a this video tutorial for more info about Designer/Photo drop zones in the Layers panel. Although the tutorial uses Designer it does work the same way for Photo.

There's also a complete set of video tutorials for Affinity Photo available here.

[Caroline Trippe]

Alfred, good to know about those blue lines. I saw them, but wasn't sure at first what they meant.  A little tricky at first, but now I'm getting it. Once I've done it a zillion times....    Thanks MEB for the tip on the drop zone  tutorials. I have actually discovered the video Tutorials for AP  and have been working my way through them! They're very helpful, though I have to watch most of them several times.